Good Grief (19 page)

All week I think about calling Marion back, but I’m not sure what to say. It’s as though grief has finally found her and she’s denying everything, even denial.

The college parking lot sparkles optimistically on the first morning of classes. But I don’t want to get out of the car. Students bustle toward the administration building with determination. They all look so
young.
Yesterday I couldn’t wait to join the culinary arts program, to conquer Pastry Workshop: Pies, Cobblers, and Fruit Crisps. I even signed up for a class in how to start your own small business and called Kit to ask him to keep a lookout for commercial rental spaces. “My dream is to start my own bakery,” I told him, caffeine and optimism sparking through my veins. But now my confidence has dwindled and my brain
feels
like a fruit crisp, bubbling over with anxiety, clear thoughts going soggy. Starting a new career means planning for the future. Without Ethan.

The car heats up in the sun, and my notebook feels slippery in my perspiring hands. The thought of starting over always gives me either a rush of excitement or a crush of dread. Nothing in between.

What if I fail at this career, too? After all, public relations seemed like a wise choice. The Advanced Cutlery Techniques class description said we’ll learn to julienne vegetables and bone and ballottine a chicken, whatever that means. Maybe I should spare the chicken and drive home now.

I start the car and look over my shoulder to back up. A new lime green Volkswagen Bug is perched for my parking space, a twenty-something driver peering eagerly over her steering wheel. Suddenly my parking space defenses go up. This space is mine.
I’m late for class!
I shut off the car and wave the Volkswagen driver on. She guns her engine and shoots to the other end of the parking lot.

Honey, this is easy-peasy,
I imagine my mother saying. She and her Delta Gamma sorority sisters always said “easy-peasy.”
It’s not like it’s cordon bleu,
Ethan would point out.

I certainly can’t tell Ruth I quit on my first day. Besides, who’d screw up a pastry class? Okay,
me,
quite possibly. But so what if I do? I at least want to learn to bake the pear pie with cheddar cheese crust. Ask the teacher for pointers on my savory cheesecake recipes. Does the smoked fontina overpower the mushrooms? More important, am I going to work at Le Petit Bistro until I’m sixty-five? I yank the keys out of the ignition, shove them in my bag, squeeze the notebook to my chest, and climb out of the car.

21

“It’s a myth that people experience grief for a certain amount of time and then they’re over it,” Sandy says, clutching his clipboard to his chest and turning to scan the grief group circle. His baggy green fatigue pants and tan V-neck sweater make him look like a cross between Mr. Rogers and a private in the army fighting the war against grief. “Our culture assumes grief should be over in a year, so people may think they’re going crazy if they can’t ‘wrap it up’ by then.”

Sandy begins every meeting with a sort of pep talk sermon, then invites discussion. I wish he’d open with a talk about intimacy, about what it’s like to sleep with someone other than your husband or Ben & Jerry for the first time in six years.

Drew and I are soon to go on our fourth date, and I worry that it’s going to be horizontal. Nine of the fifteen pounds I want to lose cling to me like an overprotective mother who doesn’t want me to take my pants off until I’m married again.

“My women friends are a little impatient with me,” says Gloria, who’s sitting next to me. She’s always draped in layers of woolen capes and smells cinnamony, like autumn. She lowers her voice and twists the tassels on her cape between her fingers. “They think I should be getting
on
with my life.”

A man whose wife died of ovarian cancer nods.

Roger says, “
Fuck
them.” Roger’s son was accidentally killed by a neighbor kid who was playing with a gun, and Roger’s the maddest person in the group.

“It’s normal to feel angry,” Sandy says. “But we have to work on that anger.”

Roger digs his fist into his thigh and says, “Okay.”

“Sophie,” Sandy says, turning toward me, “we haven’t heard from you. Are you up to sharing your feelings today?”

I don’t want to tell the group that I’ve felt better in the past month. That seems like a betrayal.

“I still think of my husband every day,” I tell them. “But now I smile when I think of him. Sometimes I cry, but I don’t want to lie on the floor at the grocery store or inhale a whole box of Girl Scout cookies.” The group chuckles and nods encouragingly, all those faces like a gentle wave moving toward me.

“How’s your dream journal going?” Sandy asks. We’re all supposed to keep a dream journal, and mine is the first-prize winner for cancer nightmares.

I explain to Sandy and the group that I haven’t dreamed about Ethan being sick for several weeks now. No more hospital nightmares.

“It’s such a relief,” I tell them, embarrassed because now I’m crying. Gloria drapes a woolen wing around me and I burrow toward her, breathing her
chai
smell.

“After we’ve watched a loved one succumb to a terminal illness, it’s very helpful to be able to remember them
before
they got sick,” Sandy tells the group.

The guy whose wife died of ovarian cancer nods, wiping his cheeks with the heels of his palms. He has a large Grecian nose and black hair that curls around his forehead. He looks so young for a widower.

I’m still crying, and the guy whose wife died of cancer is crying, and Gloria’s crying, black capes shaking. Then everyone around the room is crying, except Roger, who is pounding his thigh with his fist. Sandy tells us it’s okay to feel terrible, and we feel terrible. It’s like Simon Says. The boxes of Kleenex make the rounds.

“You’ve made remarkable progress, Sophie,” Sandy says.

I shake my head and wave a hand at him dismissively, embarrassed by my grief gold star. Good girl. Good grief.

“We’ve all made remarkable progress,” Sandy adds.

Roger is pounding his fist on the side of his chair now, unable to cry. I remember feeling like him back at the grief group in San Jose— being the only dry-eyed one in the room, your crying machine out of order.

Gloria stands, her silver bracelets jangling, crosses the circle to Roger, and crouches beside his chair. She takes his fist in her hands and brings it toward her chest, gently unfurling his knotted fingers one by one. Roger bristles, then relaxes and leans toward her. Gloria murmurs to him, her voice as husky as her woolen capes. Roger leans closer to hear what she’s saying—the tops of their heads almost touching. His shoulders begin to shake and he nods yes to something. She takes his other hand and squeezes it, too, then sets them both in his lap and crosses the circle back to her seat. Roger glances down at his hands, which are finally still, then closes his eyes.

My next date with Drew is in two days, and I can’t lose nine pounds or acquire a firm butt or suntan by then. “You look great,” Ruth insists. “Shop for sexy lingerie if you’re really worried.”

I drive to Medford and hole up in the JCPenney’s dressing room with an armload of slippery camisole tops. I finger the lace along a faux leopard number. Something like this under a sweater with jeans would be casual but sexy. The saleswoman, whose spiky orange hair looks like shag carpet, wants to know if I need help.

“Do they offer liposuction at the salon upstairs?” I ask her.

She giggles. “No, but you can get a bikini wax,” she whispers loudly through the slats in the door.

“Can they wax away fat?”

“Aw, honey, don’t worry. You’re petite. You can keep the lights down low if you’re shy. That’s more romantic.”

The leopard camisole is silky and scratchy at the same time, and the spaghetti straps keep falling down, as though the top is rejecting me instead of vice versa.

I spin in a half turn, dodging the pins on the dressing room floor, and have a three-way look at my figure. The fluorescent lights make my skin look blotchy and uneven, like old linoleum, and I’m certain these are someone else’s thighs. Perhaps Margaret Thatcher’s.
Attention, shoppers. If anyone is missing a pair of grand-piano-leg thighs, they have been found in the lingerie dressing area.

I’m going to bring my savory blue-cheese-and-walnut cheesecake to try out on Drew, and a dark chocolate torte that I learned to make in class. I also want to show him the business plan for my bakery. He’s going to open a bottle of port he’s been saving for five years. The special occasionness of the port makes me nervous. It’s clearly been held for a historical event, such as the first time you sleep with someone. Everything about the date makes me nervous: the intoxicating port, the aphrodisiac chocolate dessert, and the amorous hour of our meeting—ten-thirty in the evening, after his show and my shift.

The last person I slept with was my husband, and that was ten months and a hundred cartons of peanut-butter-cup ice cream ago. During my last life. The one that was supposed to be my
only
life. Ethan, my
only
love.

Despite my layers of fleshy padding, my stomach growls forlornly.
Do you think maybe there’s a little something for us at the department store café?
it wants to know.
Maybe a croissant?
No! Nothing but tomato juice until after my potentially horizontal date with Drew.

I lift my chin, arch my back, suck in my belly. I remember holing up back in San Jose on the air mattress in my barren living room and working my way around the crust of an entire pizza, tearing off one comforting chunk of warm dough after another. I dread the thought of Drew running a hand over my round belly and comparing it to the washboard abs of certain breathy actresses with phony British accents and pompous heirloom jewelry. But wouldn’t he tire of her bony shoulders and small breasts, which look as flat as drink coasters under those cashmere sweaters? Wouldn’t he crave a bit of voluptuousness?

I switch to a lacy black camisole, but it’s as scratchy as wool against my skin.

Certainly Ethan wouldn’t mind my new full figure. He always thought I looked great, even when I was in sweatpants with hurricane hair.

I feel guilty for longing to sleep with anyone other than my husband. The last time Ethan and I made love should be my last time forever. It was right before he went into the hospital for good. I had called the doctor and explained that the Darvon shot wasn’t helping with Ethan’s pain this time. The doctor said to give Ethan another shot and bring him to the hospital, that he was terminal now and we wanted him to be comfortable. He said this slowly and gently, and I remember wanting to hang up on him.

I gave Ethan another shot and he lay back on the pillows and licked his lips, his eyelids fluttering. I rubbed his feet, then his legs, then his shoulders, and scratched his scalp vigorously. He said all those tingling nerve endings eased the pain. His once lustrous hair was thin now and came away in wispy clumps in my hands.

Ethan laughed, loopy from the shot, and pulled me close to him. His cleanly shaven face was smooth against my cheek. Even on days when he felt awful, he showered, shaved, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, the jeans hanging from his waist. That chore sapped all his energy, though, and he usually lay down again. Then I’d bring him some breakfast, which he pretended to enjoy.

His breath was sweet, like mint toothpaste. He tugged at my T-shirt, trying to pull it off. I swept it over my head and lay beside him in my bra, his skin hot and smooth against my stomach. He pointed at my jeans, and I peeled them off. He pointed at his jeans and then his shirt, and I helped him pull them off, too. Together we lay under the cotton summer sheet, which was as light as breath over our skin. Ethan’s body seemed as thin and brittle as an old man’s, his shoulder blades two sharp wings under the sheet. His breath was weak and rattled faintly in his chest. We lay on our sides and pressed our faces together, and I felt a surge of remaining strength in Ethan’s arms as he wrapped them around me. Heat emanated from his chest, then the two of us were one and I hid my face in the pillow so he wouldn’t see me weep.

Afterward, I helped him into the tub for a hot soak, which always eased the ache in his hips. I sat beside him on a wooden stool and read his book of Blake poems aloud. He dipped his head back against the edge of the tub and closed his eyes. His lashes were as long and thick and dark as they’d always been, and I remember thinking,
There is this one last healthy thing.
Looking back, I wish he would have died right then, comfortably.

Now, I choose a conservative apricot-colored camisole with a bow so tiny that it’s almost invisible, and I begin to dress.

The warmth of Drew’s raisiny port burns through my chest and into my arms and legs. Suddenly we’re tumbling onto his bed, a feathery down cloud. We don’t have far to go, since we started our late night dinner picnic on the floor in front of the fireplace in his room. Now the reflections of the flames samba across the ceiling, making the whole room seem on fire.

Drew’s eyes are droopy—window shades drawn halfway. Drew-py.

He lifts up the down comforter, forming a cave to crawl into, and we nestle between the flannel sheets. He rubs the back of my neck and then my feet—massaging away my date anxiety. After he tugs off my jeans and sweater, I’m down to only my underwear and the peach camisole—a slippery wisp of fabric dividing my bare skin from his. Despite the warm, rubbery port sensation in my body, I dread losing my last protective layer. Would it be possible to keep on my undergarments and conduct our romance through a hole in the sheets, like the Shakers?

I lie still, not wanting anything to jiggle. Then again, I don’t want to seem like an uptight, afraid-to-get-naked sort of girl. I hold my breath, suck in my stomach, and roll gingerly toward Drew, as though there’s broken glass in the bed between us.

“Cold?” he whispers.

“Freezing,” I lie. Maybe this means I’ll get my sweater back.

But clearly there isn’t going to be any sweater or jeans or underwear or camisole or anxiety. Only fire. On the walls, on the ceiling, between my jelly legs. I remember this: Being touched. Passion. Joy. A cut healing over.

In the morning I stand in Drew’s bathroom, the plywood subfloor splintery beneath my bare feet, dreamily brushing my teeth with my finger and a gob of Drew’s Crest. Turning my head in the mirror, I check out my crazy, just-had-sex-on-the-beach hairdo, which Drew said he loves. I poke my fingers into the curls, then give up trying to fix them and splash cold water on my face.

We slept only about four hours, and now my brain, soaked with port and sex and chocolate, feels numb and giddy.

“You okay in there?” Drew says through the door. He wants to give me a fresh towel and a clean warm sweatshirt with that alluring dryer smell of his. He wants to take me out for blueberry pancakes at his favorite diner on I-5, where you can sink into comfy Naugahyde booths and read the paper all morning.

But I don’t feel up to breakfast and daylight. I’m dizzy and sleep deprived, my cheeks lacking last night’s luster. Everything went so well on our date, I’m afraid somehow it’ll get wrecked over breakfast. Maybe I’ll find out Drew’s secretly in a cult. Besides, I’m supposed to meet Kit in a few hours to check out commercial rental spaces in town. I thank Drew for the invite but tell him I’ve got to get going.

At home, while waiting for water to boil for tea, I do not want to make eye contact with the wedding picture on the kitchen counter of Ethan and me. I keep it by the sugar bowl, so that I’ll see it first thing every morning when I’m groping for coffee fixings. It wasn’t that I
had
sex with another man. It’s that I
enjoyed
sex with another man. Clothes-strewn-everywhere date sex. Not carefully-timed-trying-to-have-a-baby sex. And last night, before heading off to Drew’s, I took off the gold chain with my wedding ring. I laid the ring and chain in my jewelry box, beside the little note from Ethan saying that he’d just gone to Home Depot. The giddy delirium from my late night gives way to a leaden feeling in my chest.
I’m sorry,
I want to tell Ethan.

I shower, dress, and sit on the front porch waiting for Kit, staring at my feet in my sandals. Feet look strange if you stare at them long enough. Like flat, rectangular hands with tiny fingers.

Anything begins to look strange if you stare at it long enough. A hole in the plank on the porch looks like a gaping little mouth.
Oh,
it says.
Uh-oh.

A word begins to sound odd if you turn it over in your mind enough times, like a stone from a river that’s black, then blue, and then gray as it dries. Boyfriend. Boy. Friend. Boyfriendboyfriend. Do I have a boyfriend? A woodpecker hammers greedily at a tree beside the garage, the relentless rapping echoing through the yard. I cover my ears with my palms, which makes a new strange word beat louder in my head:
Lover, lover, lover.